Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon in which the carbon content ranges up to 2%.

By far the most widely used material for building the world’s infrastructure and industries, it is used to fabricate everything from sewing needles to oil tankers. In addition, the tools required to build and manufacture such articles are also made of steel. As an indication of the relative importance of this material, in 2013 the world’s raw steel production was about 1.6 billion tons, while production of the next most important engineering metal, aluminum, was about 47 million tons. (For a list of steel production by country, see below World steel production.) The main reasons for the popularity of steel are the relatively low cost of making, forming, and processing it, the abundance of its two raw materials (iron ore and scrap), and its unparalleled range of mechanical properties.

Source: http://www.britannica.com/technology/steel

Kill King Coal and you will kill industry. Period.

This is what the political left of all hues want to do by banning the burning of ‘fossil fuels’ and eliminating coal mining.

How utterly stupid could one be.

Update: The abundance of raw materials should be iron ore, coal and scrap. I wonder if Britannica is being PC…..

Update 1: Carbon Dioxide sequestration – basically the technique of routing the methane emitted by a carbon based life form back into its food circuit, or breathing in one’s own flatulence. Apparently steel manufacturing can use sequestered CO2 as a carbon source according to one commentator at Wattsupwiththat.

Instead of sequestering carbon dioxide to reduce its effects on global climate, why don’t we split it into harmless carbon and oxygen?—J. Henderson, Devon, Pa.

James E. Miller, a chemical engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, breaks it down:

Splitting carbon dioxide (CO2) into carbon and oxygen can in fact be accomplished, but there is a catch: doing so requires energy. If hydrocarbon fuels, which produce the greenhouse gas in the first place, supply that energy, thermodynamics tells us that the net result will be more CO2 than you started with.

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About Louis Hissink

Retired diamond exploration geologist.
I spent my professional life looking for mineral deposits, found some, and also located a number of kimberlites in NSW and Western Australia. Exploration geology is the closest one can get to practicing the scientific method, mineral exploration always being concerned with finding anomalous geophysical or geochemical data, framing a model and explanation for the anomaly and then testing it with drilling or excavation.
All scientific theories are ultimately false since they invariably involved explaining something with incomplete extant knowledge. Since no one is omniscient or knows everything, so too scientific theories which are solely limited to existing knowledge. Because the future always yields new data, scientific theories must change to be compatible with the new data.
Thus a true scientist is never in love with any particular theory, always knowing that when the facts change, so too must he/she change their minds.